i'm not as much of a wanker as it seems.

this lj is a healthy mix of useless posts, writing, and the occasional post where i talk about something of vague value.

i think that what people want you to think they like says more about them than liking it does. so uh, that explains the links down there then

my lj title is there for a reason. i promise it's sort of true

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

EEEEEE(all in melbourne)EEEEEEEE

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE AGAIN FOR A DIFFERENT TOUR

oh god oh god

must find someone to cajole into doing this with me

i've been using ljtoys, and honestly, i'm disappointed. less people are interested in my userinfo/posts than i hoped. (it also proves that nowhere near enough people are like me in going to check out a person's profile if they reply to a comment/make a comment i find interesting. seriously, what's up with that? am i alone in going like, "hey, that was funny" and checking someone's info out? it's what it's there for guys)

that being said, i do now feel validated by how often i check my friendslist now. because fuck, you people, you're as bored as i am

there are occasional strange hits that are sort of out of the blue, but hey. (i'm actually really curious as to why one of you is reading, considering our mutual acquaintance and my current circumstances with them [at least what i think they are - i may be more than a little confused about where i stand with her by now, you don't even freakin' know], but i accept i'm not exactly in a position to ask about it/the person in question. at any rate, feel free to stick around, although the attention just encourages me! i got nothin' against anyone involved. p.s. yes you, with 'mein' in your username)

there are also other, more depressing questions raised, but i may deal with those in another entry. not to mention the reminder of old bullshit by people who apparently didn't know when to let go.

there would be more, but i got to go cook dinner. later

home

fuck my flist, seriously, i love you but i'm not going back through a week. did i miss anything? are you proud of an entry? did anything happen at all? because i'm not looking at shit unless i'm told to

love you babes

( to make it look like my journal is busier than it is: year 2, aka, the rise of the fucking epics )

if i find year three/four/five/six you can be assured i'm fucking uploading them. this shit is sweet

oh my god

oh my god

I FOUND MY YEAR 1 AND YEAR 2 WRITING BOOKS

AWWWW SHIT strap yourselves in

( aw yeah )

STAY TUNED FOR MORE TALES OF INTEREST

i would like to note that even when i was six, i knew the difference between "its" and "it's". so everyone who doesn't know it can GO FUCK THEMSELVES

off to noosa for a week on sunday!

i'm sure i shall be missed incredibly

or something

“Saying 'I hate women' while you're slapping some bitch in the face is a lot more believable than a chick saying 'I hate men' while she's got her mouth full of her ex-boyfriend's cock.”

There's left field. There's far left field. There's the carpark outside left field. And out on the highway, somewhere around the turnpike where it connects to the interstate and approaching a comfortable cruising speed, there's Daniel after a few joints and half a bottle of whiskey.

“I mean, how does that work? How can two bitches give some guy a headjob at the same time, then after they're finished, he goes and grabs a beer and they talk to each other about how much of an asshole womaniser he is?”

( The man's life is on another plane to mine. This is a simple fact. )

from here

also good recently: this overcompensating, this pictures for sad children, and this cat and girl

and this sheldon made me laugh so incredibly hard. fuck i love sheldon. it's in the top 5, easily - a lot of other comics are smarter or have better art, but sheldon's writing consistently makes me laugh in a way that the other ones don't. like, look at the other links - one's a ridiculous situation involving a trailer-trash yahweh, one's anti-humour, one's barely even anything approaching a joke. and then look at the sheldon one. you can see the difference for yourself, and it does that style of comedy so well

also also good recently: this a softer world, which i will now never stop thinking about

what else is in life

oh yeah. going to noosa for a week on sunday. so... well i guess this doesn't affect much to be honest. radio silence on livejournal, i'll probably still text tweets if i want to say something, etcetc. life continues but more so. i'm broadly sorting shit out i guess

so it occurs to me that, well - i have three favourite artists in the world right now, really. one is neil young, who basically everyone knows, one is nick cave, who is well-known in certain circles, and the last one is tex perkins, who is well-known in certain circles again but these cirlces have always struck me as smaller than the nick cave ones.

so if you've ever wondered "who is this tex perkins fellow and why does this guy have a hardon for him":

( onwards. warning: videos )

and thus concludes my sudden entry spam

01. Anyone who looks at this entry has to post this meme and their current wallpaper at their livejournal.
02. Explain in five sentences why you're using that wallpaper.
03. Don't change your wallpaper before doing this. The point is to see what you had on.

( full-size image under the cutttttt )

because i really enjoy the painting. i never look at my desktop anyway (seriously, the reason i got the dock is because 99% of the time i only use those six programs in the main group [chrome doesn't count, it's only there because i can't be fucked dealing with whatever went wrong with firefox the other day]) so i don't really think about it much. i put that up maybe a month ago and i'm always surprised when i see it instead of the old wallpaper. i don't even use the icons on the desktop, so i don't know why i a) have six of them and b) have organised them like that, but whatever. i don't have two more sentences in me. ...well, one now.

fuck it, it's xkcd-hatin' time. and by hatin', i mean, if you have any love for the latest xkcd comic at all and you don't want it to feel like i'm attacking you personally for thinking it's funny, i'd scroll on by. i'm not attacking you, because everyone has their own sense of humour and everyone finds different things funny, i'm attacking this fucking comic for not being funny enough for me. and by 'not funny enough for me', i mean... well, trust me, i have strong feelings on this comic.

( comic in question )

okay, seriously, what the fucking fuck.

this shit, it's just...

( needless stuff about the open-source boob project. )

anyway. back to the point, which is hating the comic.

it's shit.

it is dull, it is boring, there is nothing in this comic worth even a chuckle or faint traces of a smile. if this comic were a joke, it would be one that goes along the lines of, "a man walks into a bar and he asks for his favourite drink. he can't get it."

seriously, break this fucker down, and what's the joke? "geeks try to reorganise social attitudes towards sex. they can't, because they don't understand how society works." what the fuck is that? THEY'RE FUCKING GEEKS. IT'S WHAT THEY DO. (for anyone who didn't visit the website, the alt-text explicitly says "geek circles", by the way.)

it is possible to get humour out of the social ineptness of geeks. the IT crowd is a perfect example. if you boil down something like "the haunting of bill crouse", the joke is distilled into "moss tries to tell a lie, but fails, because he's socially awkward". but the episode works, because it takes that joke places. it escalates the joke and it creates a comic farce and it becomes something truly ridiculous. but this comic is bullshit, because it doesn't take the joke anywhere.

the most elaborate, sympathetic summary of this comic's joke is this: "geeks try to reorganise social attitudes towards sex to avoid drama. they can't, because they don't understand that society doesn't conform to strict rules like geeks think that it should." that's fucking it. there's no "they can't, and then they create a massive social shitstorm". there's no "geeks have sex but there are hilarious consequences, so they try to reorganise social attitudes". there is no bare-bones, stripped down version of this joke, because THE JOKE IS THE FUCKING BARE-BONES VERSION.

we don't even see what the drama is. we get a graph telling us that the drama level increases. that is one goddamn step up from a narrative box saying "but unfortunately, drama increased after they changed the rules".

what's the first panel? the set-up. good. that makes sense. i don't know why there's a third person there if they just say "okay!", i don't know who the fuck would ever say "let's agree to change them, and make sex simple!", i don't exactly know why randall drew a girl saying sex has all these crazy social rules but if i felt like being critical i could make a guess. and guess what? i'm feeling critical. so fuck you, xkcd man, for making sure it's a girl geek who complains about how complicated sex is. you can't make a joke about how socially-inept geeks are while at the same time making sure you use a girl to complain about how dramatic sex is so you can avoid drawing a comic with a socially-inept male geek, which would just make it seem like he was bitching about not being able to get any. shit don't work that way. go the whole hog bagging the stereotypical image of geeks

second panel. "hooray, we've solved the problem of drama! i'll go tell everyone!" good for you little buddy. hey, how did you solve "the problem of drama"? what's that, it's not mentioned because randy skipped that trifling bit of the FUCKING BASIS OF THE GODDAMN JOKE? this guy can make comics as big or as long as he wants. we've seen it before (shit, go ONE BACK) and we'll see it again. he's not fucking limited to four panels here.

but no, he doesn't explain what the "crazy social rules" about sex are, or how they "create drama", or explain how they "solved the problem of drama", or what sort of drama happened after the increase, or why the rules failed, or how people are complicated, or how the guy told everyone, or ANYTHING AT GODDAMN ALL. fuck, if the guy at the end even walked back in wearing an unusual hat or covered in tar and feathers or carrying a fucking spork, it would be better, because we'd get some sense of the aftermath. that's right, this comic could be IMPROVED by a spork. that's how fucking bad i hate this, i'm willing to admit a "LOL SO RANDOM" object would improve it

this is what i meant when i compared it to the joke above. it can be funny! i'm sure it can! if it's explained who the man was, what bar he went into, what drink he asked for, why he couldn't get a drink, when he went in, any bit of elaboration at all, we could be apples. if the man was a sandwich, and he asked for his favourite type of food/drink and couldn't get it because the bar "doesn't serve food", that's a joke right there. you see?

"someone walks into a bar and asks for food. the barman doesn't give it to them and explains the reason."
"a sandwich walks into a bar and asks for a pie. the barman says 'sorry, we don't serve food here'."

this comic could be funny - could be funny - if it was anything more than a vague narrative outline of events. but it's not, and it sucks, so go to hell

guys

could you do me a favour?

who actually reads the writing entries?

i'm not asking for comments on them or anything, i mean - i don't comment on anywhere near enough entries to pull that sort of crap. but who actually reads them instead of scrolling by?

plz respond, as this will almost certainly affect if they show up here any more (as opposed to showing up somewhere else. probably dreamwidth)

ta.

oh my god i think i just fell in love with whoever wrote this gorgeous piece of ass

So if television is devolving back to the days of the Texaco Star Happy Gas Time Theatre, books are now just novelizations of reality TV shows written by people who have never experienced reality nor read a book, and music is officially a democracy of dunces, what does that leave us? As we all know, those lumbering newspaper dinosaurs are but one meteoric blog from extinction, and according to media economics professor Robert G. Picard—who wrote this distressing article for The Christian Science Monitor earlier in the week—they can only be saved if journalists agree to sacrifice their current pittance for even lower pay until they figure out a way to contribute something more valuable than just being journalists. Picard argues that wages are based on “value creation”—and since merely conveying information gathered from sources of knowledge and conveying it effectively is something even a total Pratt can do with his first Tweet of the day before he gets his swag on, journalists have next to no intrinsic worth left. To save the industry, Picard argues, journalists must “add something novel that creates value. They will have to start providing information and knowledge that is not readily available elsewhere, in forms that are not available elsewhere, or in forms that are more useable by and relevant to their audiences.” Oh, is that all? (So in other words, every news story needs to be tainted with “me-first” punditry, hyperlinked to distraction, and 140 characters or less? Got it.)

In the meantime, journalists who have failed to redefine news reporting for the 21st century continue to lose their jobs—that’ll learn ya to follow AP style and work with reputable sources!—and as such certain facets of the newspaper business are dying with them, like all those investigative reporters who used to save death row inmates, but are now too busy trying to save their jobs with a breaking exclusive on who Robert Pattinson is kissing today. As a result, guess what? People who were wrongly condemned don’t have anyone to help them get their story out there, so they’re dying as well! What, do they not have Twitter in jail? After all, if it can crack the case on Patrick Swayze’s death like it did this week—a rumor that was “retweeted” thousands of times after originating from a pair of jackasses at a Jacksonville radio station, to the point where Swayze himself had to issue a picture to prove that he’s alive—why waste your time on valueless reporters who can only report boring facts? Didn’t you hear what Picard said about being novel? Do that.

today's cat and girl is excellent work, particularly this panel:



apart from that: half a bottle of vodka and half a bottle of tequila is a killer. and i was expecting to come home this afternoon to a far worse post condition than i did (melbournemaniac, i mean), which was actually really pleasing because i enjoyed seeing everyone's opinions on it

carry on

i've been meaning to do this for a while -- have i already done it? i don't remember, but i'm doing it again, anyway. transcripts of the four "howlin' wolf talks" tracks on the chessbox sets. --- obviously denotes things where i just can't tell what he's saying




how i'd i start to make records? it was ------ on the plantation and uh, a man come through there picking the guitar called charley patton, and i likeded his sound. so i always did wanna play the guitar. so i got him to show me a few chords, you know, and so - every night that i'd get off work i'd go over to his house and he'd learn me how to pick the guitar. so i got good with it, so i went out for myself, and i got out there and everything was great, seeing that peoples went for what i was putting down. and i decided that uh, i would play. so i asked my father to get me a guitar. nineteen twenty-eight, the fifteenth day of january, he went and got me a guitar. and uh, i started picking the guitar first, then along come sonny boy with the harp, rice miller, then he learned me how to blow the harp. then i went to playing from there. and i been playing ever since - i played all through arkansas, mississippi, louisiana, alabama, and uh, and round in kentucky and places. but uh, i never was uh, in texas, but i played all over the cotton-belt country, you know. so that's what started me to playing the blues. then i had a woman once, she was kinda nice to me, she pulled off and left me, and that give me the blues sure enough. i went to howling like a dog ever since, you know what i mean.

...

my grandfather give me that name, before he died. john jones, his home was at ---- mississippi, he give me that name. he used to sit down and tell me tall stories about what the wolf would do, because i was a bad boy, you know, i was always in devilment. so he'd sit down and tell me about what the wolf would do. so he'd tell me the story about how the wolf done to little red riding hood, y'know. every time he would uh, every time the girl would ask 'mr wolf, what make your teeth so big?' he said 'the better i can eat you, my dear.' then he said 'what make your eyes so red?' 'the better i can see you, my dear.' and so you know, and then they finally kill the wolf. and he drove me up to the house, you know, and showed me the wolf, and i thought it was a dog. he said 'no, that's a wolf.' and i said 'well what do a wolf do?' and he said 'it howl', he said '[blues howl]'. you know, and so i got afraid of this wolf, y'know, and every time i'd kill some of my mother's chickens she'd say '[same howl]' so that it'd scare me, you know, and it made me mad, and this is why they're calling me wolf. and i gets mad about this so they just kept on calling me wolf and i got to this place where i don't care what they call me, they can call me penny if they want, you know what i mean. but at first i was afraid of the wolf - oh i was three years old, you know, when they started calling me wolf. and ever since, because you know how it is, some people, y'know, when they find out you get mad about something they always slip that in. and then wolf, you know, and it upset me. i didn't know it was going to be a great name.

...

well i'd just be in the field plowing, you know, and songs come to me, you know, and everything. what smokestack lightning mean is a train, you know, that uh, burn and runs on the rails, you know. and a lot of people, yeah, a lot of people. s'got a little smokestack about that long. [interviewer talking about 'i asked for water (she gave me gasoline)'] i asked the woman for some water. well she was mad with me, when she brought me it, yeah. well what i mean, you see, she said well i'll kick your [meaningful noise] but i had to put it 'she gave me gasoline', you know. [chuckle] that's when i stayed out all night, you know what i mean, running around with some other broads, you know. and i come in and say 'baby, would you give me a drink of water' and she meant uh, you know, but i, i said smokestack lightning, i ask for water, you know.

...

my reputation is too high to let somebody drag me with the weed. i'll take a drink of whiskey, but long as the day i live you'll never hear tell of me fooling with no cigarettes, you know, something that ain't good for me. police catch me, then they gonna write a big story, 'the wolf chained the moon, pulled the stars down, and i think he had the shining pain', you know what i mean, that hurts me. [laughing]

so in year 12 for english literature one of the sacs was to write a piece in the style of raymond carver. if you have read any carver you will know this is a sort of open brief - he is a minimalist but he changes his style from story to story depending on the speaker.

he is also a master of unease in that in a lot of his works there is this deep unsettlement that is hinted at abstractly and sometimes a lot less so. while trying to avoid sounding too silly and literary, there's this very subtle, very quiet sense of malaise that pervades a lot of his stories and it is derived from the working-class milieu that a lot of them are set in

the story i chose to write in the style of was "why, honey?" which is one of the more outright ones. it is written in the style of a woman writing a letter to someone who has asked a question about her son, and as the story/letter goes on you get this portrait of a fundamentally broken young man, violent and possibly sociopathic but written through the eyes of a woman who is scared and confused for her child. it is extremely forthright compared to some of his other work but the actual voice of the narrator changes it - while she is talking about her son trying to explode a cat with firecrackers or coming home with a bloody shirt it transforms from this violent act into a shallow portrait that sounds brittle and fragile.

when i was writing my piece i knew exactly what i wanted to write it about, it was just setting it up that was the problem. i wanted to emulate that very simple voice that was achieved by the use of the letter as setting - it lets you speak with a narrative voice that his other minimalist work takes away. but at the same time this was an issue because i had to write my story but make it something that this character would write, and i look at it now and i know i could do better but i am still extremely proud of how it turned out, for a year 12 lit sac.

i would like to add that i find it amusing that how i wrote then, for a simple character while trying to emulate a writer i could never match up to, is how i write in my livejournal now as a matter of course. something happened there

in some places i think it gets too simple and in others too complex, but i was trying to make a character who wrote in a way he thought he should write, not actually one who wrote how he wrote. think of a man who acts the way he thinks he should act in front of other people and never looks quite natural and that is what i was aiming for with this - there are one or two turns of phrase that i think he has picked up as cliches. in the parts of it that seem too simple i think when i wrote it i was trying to communicate the fact that he remembers it as a child and so he wrote as a child because he still thinks of it in those words

this is one of the few pieces of writing i have ever truly thought about and planned and attempted to communicate a message without saying it and honestly i still feel it is one of the best things i have written. you may think otherwise but i am not bothered, this is not a dismissal of your feelings but a reflection of the fact that i am honestly proud of the work that went into this, because it has not happened for anything since

and without further ado






( i was so surprised to receive your letter asking about my sister )